Accepting Evangelicals

Benny Hazelhurst is chair of Accepting Evangelicals, ‘an open network of Evangelical Christians who believe the time has come to move towards the acceptance of faithful, loving same-sex partnerships at every level of church life’. He sets out his position in an article published in the March 2014 edition of Anvil.

He starts by rejecting the ‘false binaries’ that we experience in life and theology, and argues that Jesus, too, rejected ‘false binaries’. This is only part of the story, of course, since there were many issues on which Jesus appeared quite happy to offer binary alternatives.

He then looks at the key biblical texts. He argues that the ‘abominations’ of Leviticus 18 and 20 referred not to same-sex sexual acts in general, but only that of cult prostitution. In doing so, he cites Robert Gagnon’s observation that ‘There is good evidence of homosexual cult prostitution in Israel during the period of the divided monarchy’ but comes to the opposite conclusion from Gagnon: if even this context of (possibly acceptable) same-sex activity is forbidden, these verses represent a comprehensive rejection of same-sex sexual unions. Like many other ‘accepting’ commentators, Hazlehurst assumes Jesus says nothing of relevance, ignoring his sayings about ‘sexual immoralities’ and turns to Paul. He follows the largely discredited idea that in Romans 1 Paul is referring only to cult, or excessive, or ‘inverted’ same-sex activity by heterosexuals. He agrees that arsenokoites in 1 Corinthians 6:9 is probably Paul’s coining of a term based on Leviticus 18, but since he has decided this is a cult reference, the term now has no relevance.

His conclusion is that people matter more than rules, and we can see God’s blessing in faithful same-sex relations amongst Christians. Ironically, this approach sets a binary opposition between welfare and regulation, and between the work of the Spirit in the contemporary world and the Spirit’s speaking through Scripture.